Lincoln-Douglas Debates

The 1858 series of seven "joint discussions," as they were first called, between U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas and Illinois Republican Party leader Abraham Lincoln were unprecedented. Never before had men openly campaigned for senator, especially by engaging in a direct public contest filled with dramatic debates. People turned out by the thousands to hear these two political rivals debate the future of slavery in America, and newspapers across the country covered the exchanges. Democrats ultimately retained control of the assembly and reelected Douglas, but Lincoln knew he had done well for the new Republicans and for the anti-slavery cause, assuring correspondents afterward that the issue was "not half-settled." (By Matthew Pinsker)

Tabs

Both Lincoln and Douglas knew that the election of 1858 would be decided by swing voters in central Illinois counties where only three of the seven debates were held. The debates were, yes, a central feature of the campaigns of 1858, but in the narratives, they have come completely to eclipse the campaigners. That is, in large measure, the accident of print. It is one mark of the national stake in the 1858 senatorial contest that the rival Chicago newspapers – the Chicago Press & Tribune and the Chicago Times – hired stenographers trained in shorthand to take down every word of the debates as uttered, then used the state’s rail network to speed the debate transcripts into the newspapers’ copy rooms and so have them in print (and available to the new national wire service, the Associated Press) within forty-eight hours. This was an expensive and labor-intensive proposition, and neither newspaper was in a position to extend that kind of coverage to the balance of the candidates’ individual speaking stops. So the debates, simply on the basis of their availability, rapidly overshadowed the other speeches made by Lincoln and Douglas throughout the campaign, and when Lincoln assembled a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings from the campaign for publication in 1860, it was the texts of the debates, rather than any of the other speeches, which made up most of the book.

The debates were both a serious discussion of the issues and a form of communal entertainment. People arrived early, held picnics and parades, and greeted the arrival of their candidate with frenzied enthusiasm. The debates themselves were carefully managed, however. Timekeepers were strict, and audience demonstrations of anger or applause were discouraged lest they consume time allocated to either candidate. The audiences, in general, did remain attentive for three hours of political debate.

David Zarefsky, Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 51.

In the series of debates that focused national attention on the Illinois senatorial contest, Lincoln hammered away at the theme that Douglas a covert defender of slavery because he was not a principled opponent of it. Douglas responded by accusing Lincoln of endangering the Union by his talk of putting slavery on the path to extinction. Denying that he was an abolitionist, Lincoln made a distinction between tolerating slavery in the South, where it was protected by the Constitution and allowing it to expand to places where it could legally be prohibited. Restriction of slavery, he argued, had been the policy of the Founders, and it was Douglas and the Democrats who had departed from the great tradition of containing an evil that could not be immediately eliminated.

Lincoln, as Republican nominee for the Senate seat, boldly challenged Douglas to a series of joint debates. This was a rash act, because the stumpy senator was probably the nation's most devastating debater.

Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy, The American Pageant: A History of the Republic, 10th ed., (Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1994), 429.

At first glance the two contestants seemed ill matched. The well-groomed and polished Douglas, with stocky figure and bullish voice, presented a striking contrast to the lanky Lincoln, with his baggy clothes and unshined shoes. Moreover, "Old Abe," as he was called in both affection and derision, had a piercing, high-pitched voice and was often ill at ease when he began to speak.

Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy, The American Pageant: A History of the Republic, 10th ed., (Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1994), 430.

The most famous debate came at Freeport, Illinois, where Lincoln narly impaled his opponent on the horns of a dilemma. Suppose, he queried, the people of a territory should vote slavery down? The Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision had decreed that they could not. Who would pervail, the Court or the people?...His [Douglas'] reply to Lincoln became known as the "Freeport Doctrine." No matter how the Supreme Court ruled, Douglas argued, slavery would stay down if the people voted it down.

Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy, The American Pageant: A History of the Republic, 10th ed., (Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1994), 430.

The 'Little Giant's' [Douglas] loyalty to popular sovereignty, which still had a powerful appeal in Illinois, probably was decisive. Senators were then chosen by state legislatures; and in the general election that followed the debates, more pro-Douglas members weree elected than pro-Lincoln. Yet thanks to inequitable apportionment, the districts carried by Douglas supporters represented a smaller population than those carried by Lincoln supporters. 'Honest Abe' thus won a clear moral victory.

Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy, The American Pageant: A History of the Republic, 10th ed., (Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1994), 431.

Lincoln possibly was playing for larger stakes than just the senatorship. Although defeated, he had shambled into the national limelight in company with the most prominent northern politicians. Newspapers in the East published detailed accounts of the debates, and Lincoln began to emerge as a potential Republican nominee for president.

Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy, The American Pageant: A History of the Republic, 10th ed., (Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1994), 431.

In the debate at Freeport, Illinois, Lincoln challenged Douglas to explain how popular sovereignty - the method the Kansas-Nebraska Act had used to settle the slavery issue in the new territories - was still workable in the wake of Dred Scott. Douglas replied that the people of a territory could still prohibit slavery simply by refusing to pass the local laws necessary to make a slave system work: 'It matters not what ways the Supreme Court may...decide...The people have the lawful means to introduce [slavery] or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist...unless it is supported by local police negotiators.'

Despite the acclaim he gained in the North for his stand against the Lecompton constitution, Douglas faced a stiff challenge in Illinois for reelection to the United States Senate. Of his Republican opponent, Abraham Lincoln, Dougals said: "I shall have my hands full. He is the strong man of his party - full of wit, facts, dates - and the best stump speaker with his droll ways and dry jokes, in the West.' Physically as well as ideologically, the two men formed a striking contrast. Tall (6'4") and gangling, Abraham Lincoln once described himself as 'a piece of floating driftwood...' Douglas was fully a foot shorter than the towering Lincoln. But his compact frame contained astonishing energy.

Neither man scored a clear victory in argument, and the senatorial election itself settled no major issues. Douglas's supporters captured a majority of the seats in the state legislature, which at the time was responsible for electing U.S. senators. But despite the racist leanings of most Illinois voters, Republican candidates for the state legislature won a slightly larger share of the popular vote than did their Democratic rivals. Moreover, in its larger significance, the contest soldified the sectional split in the national Democratic Party and made Lincoln famous in the North and infamous in the South.

During the debates, Lincoln spoke forcefully against premitting slavery in the territories. He said that the United States could not survive "half slave and half free." Douglas supported popular sovereignty, which was the right of territories to vote to allow or ban slavery within their borders. Neither man liked slavery, but they saw different ways of dealing with the issue.

The high point of the campaign came in a series of seven debates held from August to October 1858. The Lincoln-Douglas debates mixed political drama with the atmosphere of a festival. At the debate in Galesburg, for example, dozens of horse-drawn floats descended on the town from nearby farming communities...Douglas used the debates to portray Lincoln as a virtual abolitionist and advocate of racial equality. Both charges were calculated to doom Lincoln in the eyes of the intensely racist Illinois voters. In response, Lincoln affirmed that Congress had no constitutional authority to abolish slavery in the South, and in one debate he asserted bluntly that 'I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about the social and political equality of the white, and black man.' However fending off the charges of extremism was getting Lincoln nowhere; so in order to seize the initiative, he tried to maneuver Douglas into a corner.

The Republican Party opposed Douglas' position, but so did southern Democrats. Still, Douglas won the election and kept his Senate seats. On the other hand, Lincoln lost the election but gained a national reputation. Some Republicans began to think of this plain-speaking man as a possible presidential candidate.

In 1858, Stephen A. Douglas, a leading Democrat, ran for reelection to the United States Senate. Everyone thought that if he was elected, Douglas would run for President in 1860. Therefore, the Republican party hoped it could stop him now. Republicans in Illinois chose Abraham Lincoln to challenge Douglas.

Although short and stocky, Douglas was called the Little Giant by his admirers. He dressed in the latest fashion, including a colorful vest…By contrast, Abraham Lincoln was extremely tall and thin. He seemed even taller because of his stove-pipe hat, in which he kept his notes and other pieces of paper. He appeared plain and even awkward as he stood solemnly addressing the crowds. His clothes were far from fashionable and were usually rumpled. He often slept in them because he traveled in a regular railway car. When speaking, Lincoln talked in direct and plain language.

While neither man wanted slavery in the territories, they disagreed as to how to keep it out. In the course of the debates, each candidate tried to distort the veiws of the other. Lincoln tried to make Douglas look like a defender of slavery and of the Dred Scott decision. Neither charge was true. In turn, Douglas tried to show that Lincoln was an abolitionist. That charge was also not true.

Lincoln said, 'I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.' At the same time, he insisted that slavery was a moral, social, and political wrong and hoped it would eventually disappear where it existed in the South. He confessed that he had no idea how or when this would happen. However, he stressed again and again that the moral wrong of slavery should not be allowed to spread.

Douglas immediately retorted with an answer that became known as the Freeport Doctrine. He acknowledged that slavery could not exist without laws to support it - laws dealing with runaways, the sale of slaves, and the like. If the people of a territory refused to pass such laws, Douglas said, slavery could not exist in practice, not matter what the Supreme Court said about the theory of the matter. Douglas convinced many Illinois voters who simply wanted to keep slavery out of the territories. As a result, he won the senatorial election.

Douglas won the senatorial election. His Freeport Doctrine cost him most of his support in the South, however. Many Southerners had considered the Dred Scott decision a major victory. Now they heard Douglas saying that settlers could easily get around it.

Douglas entered the 1858 Senate race in Illinois. Concerned with national unity, he wanted to find a compromise between proslavers and free-soilers. He also wanted a solid reelection victory, for he hoped to win the presidential election in 1860. Douglas's opponent was Republican Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was an Illinois lawyer with little political experience. He had served one term in the House of Representatives. In 1858 Lincoln did not seem to be a rising politician.

The opponents seemed a study in contrasts. Lincoln, who had been born in a log cabin in Kentucky, retained a folksy manner. He slept in a homemade flannel undershirt, and he often told jokes to make a point. Beneath the folksy manner, however, there was a shrewd politician.

Lincoln and the Republicans promised to stop the expansion of slavery and to allow slavery in ithe South to die a 'natural death.' The alternative was to allow slavery to expand 'til it shall become alike lawful in all states, old as well as new, North as well as South.' Douglas did not believe that slavery was a crucial issue. The best way to protect the Union, he thought, was to let each state rather than Congress make a decision about slavrey. 'If each state will only agree to mind its own business, and let its neighbors alone,' he argued,'this republic can exist forever divided into free and slave states.'

Douglas claimed that, although it was legal for an owner to bring a slave into any territory, citizens could refuse to enact laws protecting slavery. Without slave codes, slavery simply could not exist. Many voters were impressed with Douglas's logic. Douglas's reply became known as the Freeport Doctrine. He claimed that, although it was legal for an owner to bring a slave into any territory, citizens could refuse to enact laws protecting slavery. Without slave codes, slavery simply could not exist. Many voters were impressed with Douglas's logic. In the Free Doctrine, however, Douglas angered northern abolitionists by dismissing the moral issue of slavery. Furthermore, Dogulas lost southern support by suggesting a way to get around the Dred Scott decision and thus stop the extension of slavery. Douglas was reelected to the Senate. In the upcoming presidential election, however, southerners would not forget his stand.

…for weeks, the two candidates followed each other around the state engaging in long-range debates by speaking on the same platform only days apart. Douglas finally agree to meet Lincoln in seven face-to-face debates. These debates have become part of the folklore of American history. Thousands of farmers crowded into the seven towns to listen to three hours of outdoor oratory in weather ranging from stifling heat to cold rain. The campaign took on the character of high drama. It was David versus Goliath-only this time David, at 6 feet 4 inches, was nearly a foot taller than Goliath.

Douglas tried to put Lincoln on the defensive by identifying him with the abolitionists. The country could survive half slave and half free, said Douglas. It had done so from the beginning and there was no reason why it could not do so indefinitely. Popular sovereignty gave the residents of territories the choice to have slavery or not. In all remaining territories they were sure to exclude slavery, said Douglas, if given a fair choice. This would achieve what most Northerners wanted without the risk of disunion, which the Black Republicans would provoke with their abolitionist doctrine of 'ultimate extinction.' Moreover, said Douglas, the Republicans favored black equality. He hammered away at this theme ad nauseam, especially in the Butternut counties of southern Illinois. 'I do not believe that the Almighty ever intended for the negro to be the equal of the white man,' thundered Douglas as his partisans roared approval. 'He belongs to an inferior race, and must always occupy an inferior position.' America was a white man's country, 'made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity for ever, and I am in favor of confinnig citizenship to white men.'

In any case, the voters of Illinois divided almost evenly in the election. Pro-Douglas candidates for the legislature polled heavy majorities in the southern half of the state, 125,000 votes, the Douglas Democrats 121,000, and a handful of anti-Douglas Democrats, 5,000. But Douglas carried a larger number of counties, which preserved the Democratic majoirty on the joint ballot in the legislature and enabled the party to reelect him. Elsewhere in the free states, the Democrats suffered another calamity. Their fifty-three Northern congressmen were reduced to a paltry thirty one. Republicans won pluralities in Pennsylvania and Indiana as well in Illinois-states that would give them the presidency in 1860 if they could retain their hold.

Although these debates illustrated the deep differences between Republican and Democratic attitudes toward slavery, they also reflected Republican ambivalence toward racial equality and the contradictions inherent in Lincoln's commitment to both 'ultimate emancipation and the indefinite continuation of slavery where it already existed. Douglas's insistence that the Republicans could not have it both ways hit uncomfortably close to the mark. But in 1858 this was the only way for Republicans to mediate the tension between the competing values of antislavery and union.

Athough far from a radical abolitionist, in these debates Lincoln skillfully staked out a moral position not only in advance of Douglas but well ahead of his time. Lincoln was also very much part of his time. He believed that whites were superior to blacks and opposed granting specific equal rights to free blacks. He believed, furthermore, that the physical and moral differences between whites and blacks would 'forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality' and recommended 'separation' and colonization in Liberia or Central America as the best solution to racial differences.

Lincoln, however, differed from most contemporaries in his deep commitment to the humane principles of equality and essential diginity of all human beings, including blacks. Douglas, by contrast, arguing against race mixing in a blatant bid for votes, continually made racial slurs. Lincoln believed not only that blacks were 'entitled to all the natural rights...in the Declaration of Independence" but also that they had many specific economic rights as well, like 'the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands had earned.' In these rights, blacks were, Lincoln said, 'my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.'

Unlike Douglas, Lincoln hated slavery. At Galesburg, he said, 'I contemplate slavery as a moral, social and and political evil.' In Quincy, he said that the difference between a Republican and a Democrat was quite simply whether one thought slavery wrong or right. Douglas was more equivocal and dodged the issue in Freeport by pointing out that slavery would not exist if favorable local legislation did not support it. Douglas's moral indifference to slavery was clear in his admission that he did not care if a territorial legislature voted it 'up or down.' A white supremacist, Douglas was democratic enough to want white poeple to be able to create whatever type of society they wanted. Republicans did care, Lincoln affirmed, sounding a warning that by stopping the expansion of slavery, the course toward 'ultimate extinction had begun.'

Although barred by the Constitution from doing anything about slavery where it already existed, Lincoln said that since Republicans believed slavery to be wrong, 'we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as wrong'

As Douglas predicted, the election was hardfought. It was also closely contested. In the nineteenth century, citizens voted for state legislators, who in turn selected the U.S. senator. Since Democrats won a slight majority in the legislature, the new legislature chose to return Douglas to the Senate. But the debates thrust Lincoln, the prairie Republican, into the national spotlight.

James L. Roark, et al., eds., The American Promise: A History of the United States, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 478.

A relative and unknown and a decided underdog in the Illinois election, Lincoln challenged the incumbent Douglas to debate him face to face. Douglas agreed, and the two met in seven communities for what became a legendary series of debates. To the thousands who stood straining to see and hear, they must have seemed an odd pair. Douglas was five feet four inches tall, broad, and stocky; Lincoln was six feet four inches tall, angular and lean. Douglas was in perpetual motion, darting across the platform, shouting, and jabbing in the air. Lincoln stood still and spoke deliberately. Douglas wore the latest fashion and dazzled audiences with his flashy vests. Lincoln wore good suits but managed to look rumpled anyway. But their differences in physical appearance and style were of least importance. They showed the citizens of Illinois (and much of the nation because of the widespread press coverage) the difference between the anti-Lecompton Democrat and a true Republican. They debated, often brilliantly, the central issue before the country: slavery and freedom.

James L. Roark, et al., eds., The American Promise: A History of the United States, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 478.

Lincoln badgered Douglas with the question of whether he favored the spread of slavery. He tried to force Douglas into the damaging admission that the Supreme Court had repudiated his territorial solution, popular sovereignty. In the debate at Freeport, Illinois, Douglas admitted that settlers could not now pass legislation barring slavery, but he argued that they could ban slavery just as effectively by not passing protective laws. Without 'appropriate police regulations and local legislation,' such as those found in slave states, he explained, slavery could not live a day and a hour.

James L. Roark, et al., eds., The American Promise: A History of the United States, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 478.

Amid the recriminations over Dred Scott, Kansas, and the depression, the center could not hold. The Lecompton battle put severe strains on the most substantial cord of union that was left, the Democratic party. To many Douglas seemed the best hope, one of the few remaining Democratic leaders with support in both sections. But now Douglas was being whipsawed between the extremes. Kansas-Nebraska had cast him in the role of 'doughface,' a southern sympathizer. His opposition to Lecompton, the fradulent fruit of popular sovereignty, however, had alienated him from Buchanan's southern junta. But for all his flexibility and opportunism, Douglas had convinced himself that popular sovereignty was a point of principle, a bulwark of democracy and local self-government. In 1858 he faced reelection to the Senate against the opposition of Buchanan Democrats and Republicans. The year 1860 would give him a chance for the presidency, but first he had to secure his home base in Illinois.

Douglas tried to set some traps of his own. It is standard practice, of course, to put extreme constructions upon an adversary's stand. Dougals intimated that Lincoln belonged to the fanatical sect of abolitionists who planned to carry the battle to the slave states, just as Lincoln intimated the opposite about his opponent. Douglas accepted, without any apparent qualms, the conviction of black inferiority that most whites, North and South, shared at the time, and sought to pin on Lincoln the stigma of advocating racial equality.

To oppose Douglas, the Illinois Republicans put up Abraham Lincoln. Born in a log cabin in Kentucky, Lincoln was a self-made man. Gifted with a down-to earth sense of humor and with much political shrewdness, Lincoln was a match for Douglas in wit, in logical argument, and in general ability.

Throngs of people came to seven Illinoise towns to hear Lincoln and Dougals vigorously debate the issues of the day. Newspapers in every section of the land reported the debates. Lincoln greatly impressed those who heard him and many who read what he said.

Douglas was a skillfull politician. His answer to Lincoln became known as the Freeport Doctrine, after the Illinois town where the debate took place. Douglas cleverly replied that the legislature of a territory could refuse to pass a law supporting slavery and in effect could exclude slavery from the territory. Douglas' statement met with enough approval in Illinois to elect him Senator. Nevertheless, the Freeport Doctrine weakened Douglas in the South. By doing so, it also cost him the nomination for the Presidency in 1860 by a united Democratic party. Southerners began to realize that Douglas' popular sovereignty did not mean that he favored the expansion of slavery.

Belz, Herman. "Rhetoric and Deliberation in the Debate Over Slavery -- Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate by David Zarefsky." Review of Politics 54, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 338.

Lincoln, Abraham, and Stephen Arnold Douglas. Political Debates between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, in the Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in Illinois : Including the Preceding Speeches of each, at Chicago, Springfield, etc. : Also, the Two Great Speeches of Mr. Lincoln in Ohio, in 1859, as Carefully Prepared by the Reporters of each Party, and Published at the Times of their Delivery. 3rd ed. Columbus, OH: Follett, Foster and Co., 1860.

Lincoln, Abraham, and Stephen Arnold Douglas. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text. Edited and with an introduction by Harold Holzer. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993.